Before the Nothingness

by Kevin George

  “I didn’t approve this change,” Samuel said.

  The security leader stepped closer to Samuel. He was several inches shorter than Samuel, but that didn’t make him any less intimidating.

  “You didn’t need to approve it,” the man said. “Now, we got two options to deal with this. First, you accept this change and don’t make any problems.”

  The man’s beady eyes stared at Samuel, who couldn’t hold his gaze for longer than a moment before looking away.

  “And the second option?” Samuel asked.

  The security leader shook his head. “You don’t want to know that one.”

  Samuel nodded and extended his hand. The man shook it and finally offered his name.

  “Jeff Moretti.”

  “Okay, Moretti, I have a job I need handled,” Samuel said. “I need Sean Curran picked up by one of the guards and brought to Dr. Weller’s lab. Have them tell Weller that Curran is to be his first one.”

  Moretti nodded and snapped his fingers at one of the nearby guards, who rushed to his side. He repeated Samuel’s order and the guard nodded, hurrying off without a word.

  “Consider it done,” Moretti said.

  “Don’t you want to know what that’s about?” Samuel asked.

  Moretti shook his head. “I wasn’t given the chance to save myself and my family just to come here and question orders.”

  Samuel didn’t want to explain his decision to anyone—he didn’t want to think about it himself—but there was something about Moretti’s blind obedience that unnerved him.

  “Have there been any intruders on our lands today? Any traitors you’ve found among us?” Samuel asked, heading farther into the security center.

  “All clear,” Moretti said. “Which is how I plan to run things in our section of the world.”

  “And the Communication Center?” Samuel asked. “Have you intercepted any transmissions to or from our building beyond The Mountain?”

  Moretti frowned. “My understanding was that those messages are the private communications of Charles Jonas.”

  “My father, that is correct,” Samuel said. “Dave Smith and I had an arrangement where he would keep me informed of the plans involving—”

  “I’m not Dave Smith,” Moretti said. “And I’m not comfortable spying on your father. If you want information from him, get it from him yourself.”

  Samuel wondered how the new security leader could send a man to his death without question, but suddenly become scrupulous when it came to passing along a few messages from the outside world.

  “My father isn’t always forthcoming with information that I require,” Samuel said. “Especially since I will be in control of all three of our survival sites one day.”

  “You alone?” Moretti asked with a snicker. “Like how you made the decision to replace Smith with me?”

  Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “The Board offers its input from time to time—and they may make minor decisions when my attention is needed elsewhere—but there’s no doubt the Jonas name will always rule One Corp.”

  Moretti snorted, his lips turning into an unnatural smile. He turned to the workers at various stations behind him, pointing to one in particular. “You!”

  A young woman waddled toward them. It was clear from the swollen belly beneath her jumpsuit that she was very pregnant. Still, Moretti snapped his fingers when she didn’t reach them quickly enough.

  “Move it, Kaprazak,” he ordered. “Before I arrived, Smith had you monitoring the Comm Center?” The woman nodded. “And?”

  “We received word that the Ellison HASS project has successfully launched,” Kaprazak said. “Communication with them has been positive thus far, but they continue to ask for a link to our GPS system. We’re still jamming the signal from within The Mountain, as you requested.”

  Samuel nodded. “Keep doing that.”

  Moretti snapped his fingers and pointed across the room. The woman retreated to her work station.

  “Your father continues to request the GPS beacon be fixed?” Moretti asked.

  “I. . . and The Board. . . we decided it’s best to keep our facility off the grid as much as we can,” Samuel said.

  “As you say,” Moretti said with a bored shrug. “And the troubles with the City Below and its tunnels? According to reports, construction isn’t proceeding as planned and we might run out of time before a single tunnel from the city to The Mountain is completed. And that’s to say nothing of the energy lines that we’re supposed to—”

  Samuel shook his head, holding up a hand. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. The Mountain and ISU-Ville are already at maximum capacity; those are my two main areas of focus. As far as I’m concerned, the City Below is on its own. Whether they finish the tunnels and the digging and their bunker is all dependent on the people working there now. I’m more concerned about the weather.”

  “Is it really going to become worse than it already is?” Moretti asked, the first hint of fear creeping into his voice.

  Moretti led Samuel to a nearby work station, waving for its worker to go away. He swept his hand through a few holograms until an image appeared of ISU-Ville. The image was filmed from high above and swept across the seemingly endless rows of ISUs, most of which remained on the surface. Samuel recognized the view from a drone when he saw one and he suddenly felt his pulse racing. It’s been too long since I’ve taken one out for a flight. . .

  Snow covered the entire village and continued to fall in great fat flakes. Still, plenty of villagers were out and about, covered in parkas and other wintry gear, climbing the ISUs to clear solar panels of snow and ice. Others meandered about, stopping to talk with one another or point up and wave at the drone flying above. Samuel shivered just thinking about the cold, but a part of him envied the villagers and their simple lives, envied their freedom. He understood why his father and son both wanted to live among them.

  He also knew that things wouldn’t always be so simple, that the weather would grow colder, the solar hubs less efficient.

  “Much worse,” Samuel whispered to Moretti, who snorted a single time but appeared unconcerned otherwise.

  If the experts—those left out in the world, as well as those now employed at The Mountain—were correct, ISU-Ville still had a number of years of full functionality, which would then be followed by several more years of gradual decline. Samuel didn’t want to think about what those years would be like, but at least those villagers had a chance while the rest of humankind faced a far worse future. Still, a knot continued to tighten in his stomach. Only one part of the image floating in front of him made him feel the slightest bit positive.

  He turned away from the image and headed toward the door on the far side of the security center.

  “I’m taking out one of the long-range drones,” he told Moretti.

  “Thought the directive was to only worry about our lands,” the security leader said.

  “We need to know about the outside world to gauge potential danger,” Samuel said.

  “Don’t take them out too far,” Moretti said. “We already lost one of the distance ones; probably a malfunction from the cold.”

  Samuel nearly argued that the drones were made for traveling long distances, but he didn’t need to justify himself to the new guy. He entered one of the drone control rooms and exhaled deeply. Months had passed since he’d stepped into one of the rooms where he’d spent countless hours in the early days of The Mountain. Those had been carefree days when he’d been happy to allow his father to maintain control over the company, when he could monitor construction of the village and demolition of the surrounding forests.

  He donned the FI goggles and gloves and selected a drone, carefully flying it out of its hangar. Samuel needed a few minutes until he felt fully in control, but it wasn’t long before he was soaring high above The Mountain, speeding in the opposite direction of ISU-Ville. The land on The Mountain’s far side was mostly clear, many of the trees having been ripped
from the ground. He lowered the drone to thirty feet above the ground, careful not to dip too low and risk hitting anything. Several trees and other objects were randomly left standing, all of them covered in snow and difficult to see against the white backdrop. He also dealt with unexpected gusts of wind that were stronger than any he’d ever flown through.

  Within minutes, he saw an object rising out of the snow. He steered the drone close to a tank partially covered in snow. He carefully banked the drone and flew along a line, spotting the other dozen tanks. Brought in as a deterrent to potential intruders, the tanks had been manned at one time but abandoned long ago. Samuel also found the remnants of a barbed wire fence—a foot of it covered in snow—that also appeared untouched.

  He flew the drone beyond One Corp.’s defenses until spotting a single building among the rest of the snowy nothingness. The Communication Center was covered in sparkling glass, several towers encircling it, the highest tower with a massive dish on the roof of the main building. It was the newest of One Corp.’s buildings and Samuel couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to ask Moretti if Charles Jonas had traveled there. He lowered the drone toward a line of vehicles parked outside of the Comm Center, a half dozen snowmobiles as well as a larger military-style truck with snow tread tires. After completing three laps around the building—during which time he learned nothing new about who was inside or who they might be communicating with—Samuel turned the drone and kept flying into the distance.

  He gradually increased the drone’s speed, watching the world zip by within the goggles, a seemingly endless terrain of white stretching for miles and miles. By the time he spotted the first signs of society—a few ISUs scattered among even fewer log cabins, only one of which had smoke swirling out of its chimney—he’d nearly forgotten that another world still existed, that the rest of civilization didn’t merely exist on television screens and HoloTablets. The farther he flew, the more houses he found, all of them covered in snow, many of them abandoned. Still, there were signs of people remaining in the area, which became more evident as his drone approached Billings.

  A strange mix of older-style brick buildings, modern glass buildings and countless ISUs filling in any spaces in between, Billings was one of dozens of North American cities that had exploded in size and population following the relocation of millions from the East and West Coasts. Following One Corp.’s acquisition of its lands, the company—with the government’s assistance—had relocated hundreds people from homes on corporate lands into the city. It also hired countless construction workers and loggers from Billings, though none commuted to and from the city any longer. Plenty of workers had abandoned their jobs and joined the mass migration south, but most that stayed were now in the City Below. . . at least that was what Samuel assumed.

  Most of Billings was beneath snow, but a few sections remained where an attempt had been made to plow the roads. Samuel lowered the drone for a better view, finding people scattered throughout the streets, many of them hurrying from one building to the next. A part of him was disappointed to see life was proceeding as usual, albeit for a smaller population. He saw no danger and assumed the worst of the troublemakers had fled this part of the country. News broadcasts showed the worst of the chaos in the Republic of Texas and the southernmost North American states that once comprised the sovereign nation of Mexico. Humanity was actually redeemed in Samuel’s eyes, and he had a wonderful thought about the remaining citizens of Billings working together in harmony to survive despite the terrible—

  Samuel suddenly spotted movement on the streets below, a person rushing toward a storefront, a sign for a food market half hidden in snow. The person carried something large in his hands; Samuel didn’t have a chance to figure out what it was before the man threw it through the glass. Samuel was certain he could steer the drone into the broken window, but he remembered Moretti’s warning about not losing another distance drone. Instead, he hovered above the store for several minutes, keeping the camera aimed at the broken glass until the man emerged with an armful of supplies.

  The man glanced up at the drone several times as he ran away. Samuel frowned, his hope for lawful society ruined. The man no sooner turned down the next street than a trio of citizens—dressed in what Samuel assumed to be police blues—cut him off. The thief stopped and shook his head, slowly backing away. Samuel flew the drone lower, hoping to hear what was being said, though the wind howled too loudly. Expecting to see the thief caught and arrested, Samuel nearly flinched out of his goggles when he watched the three police officers—though he was no longer certain they were real officers—open fire and kill the man. The three men in blue hurried forward to grab the fallen supplies.

  A squadron of snowmobiles whipped around the corner. They were driven by a gang of citizens wearing all black, their outfits matching the guns in their hands. They opened fire on the men in blue, immediately striking two of them. The third man turned down an alley and was chased by several of the gang in black. Samuel made the split-second decision to follow the chase, not that he was certain whom to root for. The man in blue had a small lead but that only lasted seconds as the snowmobilers slid into the alley and cut the distance in half. Samuel didn’t know where the rest of the gang had gone, but he imagined them ransacking the supplies already stolen by the slaughtered men.

  The final man in blue glanced up at the drone, waving his arms as if there was something Samuel could do. The man dropped most of the supplies, causing two out of his three pursuers to stop and retrieve them. But the third kept coming and eventually trapped the man in the corner. Samuel’s drone sped toward the action and the man in blue pointed to it, momentarily distracting the black-clad snowmobiler, who pulled back his hood and stared up. The man gave a quick wave before turning back to the man in blue, shooting him dead. Samuel groaned.

  The image in the goggles suddenly flickered before coming back on. Despite Samuel’s steady hand and best attempt to keep it stable, the drone was wobbling out of control and slowly losing altitude. The world in front of Samuel’s eyes spun and for a split second, he spotted three of the black-clad snowmobilers taking shots at him, obviously connecting on several. The ground rushed up at him and the drone smashed into the snow, the screen momentarily turning black before an image appeared of the alley and surrounding buildings. Samuel tried to cajole the drone into lifting off again, but it only turned in a few circles, digging itself into the snow, coming to a stop with a view of several snowmobilers stomping in its direction.

  Samuel quickly pushed the transmit button.

  “This drone is property of One Corp.,” he said. “You are in violation of the law for shooting it down and will face severe punishment if you damage it further.”

  His warnings didn’t slow their approach; he didn’t know if the drone’s radio had broken in the crash or if the men just didn’t care. Either way, three guns were soon aimed at the drone and Samuel watched each of them flash before his view went black.

  The words “TRANSMISSION TERMINATED” appeared within the goggles and Samuel was returned to a selection screen of the remaining drones in the hangar bay. The area on the screen where his drone once was now had nothing but a darkened silhouette with a large red ‘X’ slashed through it. Samuel ripped off the goggles and gloves and stomped out of the room, fully intent on using the full power of One Corp.’s security force to invade Billings and destroy the murdering thugs terrorizing the city. But he didn’t have a chance to realize how bad of an idea that was when he emerged into the main security hub and heard an alarm blaring. Red lights flashed throughout the room and security workers gathered around one particular workstation, where Moretti yelled instructions into his earpiece.

  “Send all security units! Target is hot!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What’s happening?” Samuel asked as he rushed across the room.

  Though the security workers gathered together, nobody spoke. The only two sounds Samuel heard were Moretti yelling and a radio transmission fi
lled with snarls and Dr. Weller calling for help. Samuel snapped for the workers to get out of the way, which they did without hesitation. When he reached the workstation, he found only an image of floating blackness.

  “Where is that?” Samuel yelled at the nearest worker, though he already knew the answer.

  “Weller’s lab,” Kaprazak said, her voice shaky. “It’s blacked out, on your approval.”

  “Then switch to the nearest camera that works!” Samuel snapped.

  Kaprazak swiped her hand through the blackness until finding an image showing a frantic scene in the hallway outside of the lab. Weller’s lab remained closed as lights flashed and scientists rushed by. No sooner did the image come into focus than the door flew open and the security guard rushed out. Samuel silently urged the guard to run away, but Segata suddenly stopped, staring down the safety of the hallway for a few seconds before turning back to the open doorway.

  Segata rushed back into the lab’s outer room and emerged moments later, this time with an arm around the shoulder of an embattled Dr. Weller, whose grimy lab coat now appeared ripped and bloodied. A half-scream, half-growl erupted from behind them and Weller immediately pulled away from the guard. Just when Samuel expected both men to start running, the doctor lowered his shoulder and drove it into the guard, knocking him back and into the lab’s open door. Gasps erupted from the security workers around Samuel.

  “How much longer?” Moretti yelled into his earpiece. “One minute is too long! Get there faster!”

  Dr. Weller scampered down the hallway and out of view. When Segata showed up in the open doorway moments later, Samuel nearly breathed in relief. That was when the security guard was suddenly lifted off of his feet from behind, his scream abruptly cut off as he was yanked back into the room. Only the briefest blur of white had been seen from inside.

  “What the hell is happening in there?” one of the security workers asked nobody in particular.